“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.” - George W. Bush

Saturday, June 04, 2016

How many American soldiers want to die so that the ruling oligarchs in Kiev can hold on to their power ?

A civil war within the US military is raging, and it isn’t just a case of inter-service rivalry over scarce dollars, pitting the Army against the Air force: it’s also a reflection of the foreign policy debate that’s taking place among civilians – interventionists versusAmerica Firsters. And I know what side I’m on.

The Civil War Inside the US Military - Antiwar.com Original

Interventionists and America Firsters face off in budget battle

In early April, a battalion of senior military officials appeared before a Senate panel and testified that the US Army is “outranged and outgunned,” particularly in any future conflict with Russia. Arguing for a much bigger budget for the Army, they claimed that, absent a substantial increase in funding, the Russians would overtake us and, even scarier, “the army of the future will be too small to secure the nation.”

The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming! And before you know it, Brooklyn will be renamed Putingrad.

Of course it was pure coincidence that, shortly after these alarm bells were rung, a piece appeared in Politico magazine purportedly showing that the Russians were breathing down our necks: it revealed a “secret study” – revealed for the first time! – that supposedly detailed Russia’s deadly new capabilities as demonstrated in Ukraine. Included in this potpourri of propaganda was the assertion by none other than Gen. Wesley Clark, former presidential candidate and well-known Russophobe, that Moscow had developed a tank that is for all intents and purposes “invulnerable.”

Perhaps embarrassed by what seemed like an exercise in inter-service internecine warfare, Politico recently ran an article by Mark Perry throwing new light on what is really going on here. Citing senior military figures, Perry’s piece threw a rhetorical hand grenade into the Army’s argument:

“’This is the ‘Chicken-Little, sky-is-falling’ set in the Army,’ the senior Pentagon officer said. ‘These guys want us to believe the Russians are 10 feet tall. There’s a simpler explanation: The Army is looking for a purpose, and a bigger chunk of the budget. And the best way to get that is to paint the Russians as being able to land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. What a crock.’”

The “secret study” supposedly showed a level of technological prowess on the part of the ragtag Ukrainian rebels that many retired officers found unbelievable:

“’That’s news to me,’ one of these highly respected officers told me. ‘Swarms of unmanned aerial vehicles? Surprisingly lethal tanks? How come this is the first we’ve heard of it?’”

The reason may be because the source of this dubious intelligence is most probably the Ukrainian government, and they are notoriouslyunreliable: these are the same people who have been citing “evidence” of a full-scale Russian invasion for years now. Aside from demanding more economic aid to keep their bankrupt and notoriously corrupt economy afloat, Kiev has been eager to wheedle offensive weaponry from the US, constantly warning that, unless they get what they want, Putin will soon take the whole country. Former NATO Supreme Commander Philip Breedlove has been buttressing these warnings with what are nothing more than outright lies, claiming that tens of thousands of Russian troops armed with the latest weaponry are present in eastern Ukraine. As the German intelligence agency BND has pointed out, the sophisticated Russian military equipment supposedly pouring into eastern Ukraine is nonexistent. And German diplomats have denounced Breedlove’s overtly political interventions as “dangerous propaganda.”

What is clear is this: inter-service rivalry is driving this latest episode of “The Russians Are Coming!” Forced by budgetary considerations to choose between modernization and expansion, the Army wants to have its cake and eat it too. And they want the whole cake. They are arguing that a bigger Army is absolutely necessary in order to face down Putin in Europe – a region where, by dint of geographical reality, the Russians will always outnumber us no matter how many troops we pour into the continent. The Army’s position is that we just need more of everything – especially in terms of personnel. But as retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula and Doug Birkey, director of government relations at the Air Force Association, wrote:

“No war has been won through the mere presence of personnel or material – whether they are infantry, tanks, ships, or airplanes. If that were the case, the United States would have prevailed in Vietnam with the presence of half a million US boots on the ground in 1968, or through the expenditure of over one trillion dollars on personnel and resources over the past 14 years in Afghanistan and Iraq. Bottom line – it takes an insightful, flexible, and prudent strategy to deliver victory in any military operation.

“History stands in testament to this reality. No amount of bravery at a personal level can overcome the lack of a robust plan. Whether discussing the strategically bankrupt Rolling Thunder bombing campaign from 1965 through 1968, the failed 1980 Operation Desert One rescue mission In Iran, or the poorly planned and botched execution of Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan in 2002 – the raw projection of personnel and equipment into harm’s way without a viable course of action leads to disaster. It is fundamentally immoral to ask America’s sons and daughters to exercise bravery and sacrifice to fill the void of inadequate strategy.”

Deptula, now director of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, told Politico:

“It’s time to stop waving the bloody red shirt. Calling for more resources because you’re taking casualties is a wake-up call for a new approach – not for throwing more folks into the meat grinder. We really need to think in a deliberate goal-oriented way to secure national interests, not just parochial Army interests.”

The Army, resistant to budget constraints – and to any reform of its antiquated Vietnam era strategic perspective – is playing hawks in Congress for fools. And of course the hawks are eager to seize on any excuse to expand an already bloated US military budget – one that exceeds Russian military expenditures by seven-fold.

As for Wesley Clark’s “invulnerable” Russian tank, one officer told Politico: “What nonsense. If the Russians have developed tanks that can’t be destroyed that would be the first time that’s happened in the history of warfare.” Well, yes, but war propaganda has nothing to do with the facts: Clark, as Politico noted, is infamous for his eagerness to go up against the Russians. It was Clark who commanded a British officer to confront the Russians in Pristina, Kosovo’s capital, during the Balkan wars. And Clark has been going around making speeches in support of Kiev’s demands for lethal weaponry, echoing the Ukrainian coup leaders’ assertions that a “’renewed offensive from the east’ before VE day, on May 8” was imminent. That was May 8 of last year, and there’s still no sign of the Russian offensive.

It’s a vicious civil war unfolding in the US military, pitting “bigger is better” arguments proffered by Army advocates against the Air Force and the Navy, who say bigger isn’t better and we need to improve not only our capabilities but also our strategy – and, by implication, change US foreign policy to a less interventionist mode.

In an article supporting the Army’s position, former Army chief of staff Gordon Sullivan argued that ignoring the Army’s demands would result in more casualties: “It’s soldiers we are thinking of when we worry about the undermanned, under-ready and under-funded Army we’ve created,” he averred. Retired Col. Douglas Macgregor, cited by Politico, had a ready answer for him, laden with foreign policy implications aplenty:

“The statement is sickeningly false. If the generals actually gave a damn about the soldiers the last 15 years would have been totally different. What happened to the thousands of lives and trillions of dollars squandered in Iraq and Afghanistan? What happened to the billions lost in a series of failed modernization programs since 1991?”

The US Army has an institutional interest in our globalist foreign policy: the alleged necessity of stationing tens of thousands of soldiers in foreign lands, occupying territory, and pouring in megatons of military equipment and support networks means bigger budgets to play around with. The problem is that this strategy has failed – and it’s bankrupting us. One Pentagon officer put it to Perry this way:

“You know, which would you rather have – a high-speed rail system, or another brigade in Poland? Because that’s what this is really all about. The debate is about money, and there simply isn’t enough to go around. Which is not to mention the other question, which is even more important: How many British soldiers do you think want to die for Estonia? And if they don’t want to, why should we?”

An even more pertinent question is: How many American soldiers want to die so that the ruling oligarchs in Kiev can hold on to their power and pelf, living high on the hog at US taxpayers’ expense? The answer, I’m willing to bet, is none. And the American people will back them up in this, of that I have no doubt.

A civil war within the US military is raging, and it isn’t just a case of inter-service rivalry over scarce dollars, pitting the Army against the Air force: it’s also a reflection of the foreign policy debate that’s taking place among civilians – interventionists versus America Firsters. And I know what side I’m on.

The anti-Russian propaganda campaign has been ongoing for years: the military-industrial complex and their neoconservative allies (and beneficiaries) need a new enemy now that the “war on terrorism” is wearing a little threadbare. That’s why the media and the politicians are yelping about the alleged Russian “threat.” The only real threat, however, is to our ever-expanding military budget and the prestige of those ancient cold warriors who long for a return to the 1950s, when the prospect of World War III loomed large and Americans were digging bomb shelters in their backyards.

Antiwar.com has been debunking this shameless war propaganda for years: the overblown comparisons of Putin to Stalin (who killed some 60 million!), the regime-change operation that overthrew the elected leadership of Ukraine (with plenty of funding from the US) and installed a gang of cutthroats and authoritarians in the name of “democracy,” the provocative (and profitable!) expansion of NATO that threatens to encircle the Russians and is designed to elicit a military response – all of this and more has been exposed in these pages.

The truth of the matter, however, that is we can’t continue to do it without your help. We are being outspent by the War Party by a factor of a million to one: they have the “mainstream” media on their side, and they have absolutely no budget constraints. They can spend millions without even thinking about it.

We, on the other hand, have only you – our readers and supporters – to counter the massive propaganda campaign they have launched.

To debunk this barrage of lies we need your tax-deductible donations right now – because, yes, there is an imminent threat, and it isn’t emanating from Moscow. It’s coming from Washington , D.C., where the neocons, the foreign lobbyists, and the arms industry are agitating for a direct confrontation with the Russians. As US forces edge closer to Russia, it’s only a matter of time before a near-miss becomes a direct hit – and we’re suddenly faced with World War III.

Purely FictitiousBased on information obtained in German government circles, "Der Spiegel" gives several examples of Breedlove's assertions, which obviously contradict reality. In late March 2014, the top NATO European commander declared, Russia had amassed 40,000 soldiers at the Ukrainian border ready to attack. Intelligence services of other NATO countries, however, reported a considerably lower number of Russian soldiers and that nothing about their composition pointed toward aggressive intentions.[2] OSCE information in November 2014, to the effect that combat troops and tanks of unknown origin were moving around in Eastern Ukraine, was interpreted by Breedlove as a border-crossing movement of Russian troops, without providing any proof. According to "Der Spiegel," NATO's European commander's allegations made soon thereafter alleging a presence of Russian tanks and air defense systems in Ukraine have been confirmed neither by the German intelligence services' own satellite data nor by information from its allied US intelligence services. The same applies to Breedlove's most recent statements alleging the presence of Russian combat troops, artillery battalions and more than 1000 combat vehicles on Ukrainian territory.

WASHINGTON, June 03, 2016 — The fights started last week aimed at wrenching control of two major cities in Iraq and Syria from the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant are expected to be difficult, U.S. Central Command spokesman Air Force Col. Pat Ryder said today.

Giving his weekly counter-ISIL campaign operational update to Pentagon reporters by teleconference, Ryder said local forces in Iraq and Syria, backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, are allowing movement to retake Fallujah, Iraq, and Manbij City, Syria.

Since Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the start of Fallujah operations last week, Ryder said, the city has been further isolated and Iraqi forces continue operations to clear the outskirts of the city enabled by coalition airstrikes.

Retaking Fallujah A Challenge

Fallujah lies roughly 43 miles west of Baghdad and is the second-largest city in Anbar province. Covering an area of 53,476 square miles -- a region about the size of North Carolina -- Anbar is the largest of Iraq’s provinces and shares borders with Syria, Jordan and Kuwait. Ryder said ISIL’s continued fight to hold control of Fallujah is marked by three factors:

First, Fallujah is the first Iraqi city over which ISIL took control, and Ryder said it’s “symbolic” to ISIL. The terrorist group seized the town in January 2014, he said, and “Though it’s been increasingly isolated over the last year, it remains one of their last major strongholds in the Anbar province.”

Second, Anbar’s population centers are a source of ISIL money and the organization’s operations base, Ryder said.

Finally, Anbar’s road networks, which stretch from southern and central Syria to Baghdad and other parts of Iraq, connect ISIL- held territories, he said. With ISIL losses in Rutbah, Ramadi, Haditha, and other towns along the Euphrates, “ISIL has lost those revenue sources and … its ability to connect its territory,” Ryder said.

As of this morning, the coalition has supported the Iraqi-led operation with 65 airstrikes in the Fallujah area, striking 20 weapons caches and more than 300 enemy fighters, Ryder said.

Ryder noted that urban fighting is always difficult and the Iraqis have met with heavy ISIL resistance as its fighters use networks of trenches and tunnels, homemade bombs, suicide bombers, heavy machine guns and small-arms fire, he said.

“We're watching the intensity of their resistance carefully, as this is an indicator of how hard they intend to defend and try to keep Fallujah,” the Centcom spokesman said of enemy tactics, including ISIL trying to distract and delay Iraqi forces and the Iraq government from the Fallujah offensive by conducting high-profile terror attacks against Baghdad civilians.

Syria’s Manbij Fight Led by Locals

In Syria, operations to expel ISIL fighters from Manbij city and surrounding areas began May 30, with U.S.-led coalition forces operating in support of Arab counter-ISIL forces largely comprised of local leaders and fighters, Ryder said.

“The operations are led by the Manbij Military Council of the Syrian Arab Coalition, an indigenous Arab force from Manbij seeking to reclaim their hometown from ISIL,” he added.

Since the Manbij offensive began five days ago, more than 55 coalition airstrikes have supported Arab-led forces as they secured western lodgments on the Euphrates River, and extended the forward line of troops over 38.6 square miles, he said.

More ISILSetbacks

Liberating Manbij will cut further into ISIL’s territorial hold in the region and take out its key route to hinder the Islamic terrorists from moving fighters, finances, weapons and supplies in and out of Syria and Iraq, Ryder said.

Retaking Manbij would also impede ISIL’s ability to threaten Turkey and the rest of Europe while freeing 35,000 to 40,000 people from ISIL control, he added.

Since training began, several thousand coalition trainers, advisors and support personnel have trained more than 23,000 Iraqi forces that include “individual soldier skills, small arms and indirect fire weapons, obstacle breaching, medical training, and law and order,” he said.

-- Near Mar’a, four strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units, an ISIL weapons storage facility, and an ISIL staging area and destroyed two ISIL fighting positions, two ISIL vehicles, and an ISIL rocket rail.

Strikes in Iraq

Bomber, fighter, and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 13 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq’s government:

-- Near Fallujah, four strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed three ISIL fighting positions, two ISIL supply caches, and six ISIL staging areas and damaged three ISIL fighting positions and denied ISIL access to terrain.

(IraqiNews.com) Anbar – The Federal Police Command announced on Friday, that 402 ISIS fighters were killed since the start of Fallujah liberalization operations, while pointed out to the destruction of 23 vehicles belonging to ISIS and detonation of 604 explosive devices.

The Federal Police Command said in a statement received by IraqiNews.com, “The Federal Police forces managed to kill 402 ISIS fighters, including 41 snipers since the start of the liberation battles of Fallujah,” indicating that, “Five booby-trapped bulldozers and 23 vehicles carrying mono machine guns had been destroyed.”

The statement added, “The security forces were able to destroy 61 vehicles and seven laboratories for manufacturing IEDs and booby-trapped vehicles, as well as detonating 604 explosive devices and dismantling ten booby-trapped buildings.”

The Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced in 23 May 2016, that the security forces had started military operations to liberate the city of Fallujah (62 km west of Baghdad), while emphasized that ISIS has no choice but to flee from the battle.

(IraqiNews.com) Anbar – The Federal Police Command announced on Saturday, that the security forces killed 67 ISIS fighters in al-Saqlawiyah in northern Fallujah and advanced into the center of Saqlawiyah from three axes.

The Federal Police Command said in a statement received by IraqiNews.com, “The Federal Police forces managed to kill 67 ISIS fighters, including eight foreign snipers during the liberation battles in the axes of Saqlawiyah (20 km north of Fallujah).”

The statement added, “The security forces were also able to destroy 23 ISIS targets and advanced into the center of al-Saqlawiyah from three axes.”

Dwight Eisenhower said, "every war will surprise you." I think what caught our guys off guard was the hundreds of headcutters that were willing to crawl up into a truck, and blow themselves up in a suicide attack. There for a long time, every little old battle saw 8, 10, or more of these suicide vbied attacks. Brutal, and damned effective.

Also, the "politics" of it all were nuts. I'm just glad we didn't have a hundred and fifty thousand troops in there getting blown all to hell. As far as I'm concerned, they can drag their feet, and fuss and fume into the next century if they want. They can live in shit, and we can practice our bombing.

I don't think the military did a piss poor job in Iraq. We were just using them for something they weren't designed to do.

They "broke" the country in, what, 3 or 4 weeks? Hard to fault that. That's what they were trained to do, and they did it. Policing a foreign shithole is Not something our Armed Forces are, or should be, trained for, or asked to do.

The assault began in the early hours on Monday when the Iraqi Army and Iranian-backed Shia militias stormed the city in Iraq’s Anbar Province under British and American air cover to expel ISIS once and for all.

Brace yourself for atrocities.

More than 300,000 people live there. The vast majority have fled, but roughly 50,000 are still trapped inside. ISIS is holding hundreds of families and using them as human shields.

Human shields can work against Western armies that hold their fire when possible to avoid killing civilians. The Iraqi Army doesn’t care about killing civilians, and the Iranian-backed militias care even less.

ISIS is also deploying suicide bombers, including suicide car bombers.

Organizations and diverse as Human Rights Watch and the US Department of Defense are worried about war crimes, not only from ISIS—which commits war crimes as a matter of course and of policy—but also from “our” side.

Last year, Iraqi and Iranian-backed forces took back the ISIS-held city of Tikrit, and they’ve been under investigation for war crimes ever since. Allegations include the massacring of civilians, torturing and summarily executing captives, and displaying human heads.

The US and Britain are in a terrible spot here. There is no getting around this: we’re militarily assisting gangs of vicious murderous bastards. The only reason it’s even remotely defensible is because the guys on the other side are even more vicious—the most vicious, in fact, in all of the world.

It’s safe to say at this point that ISIS-held territory in Syria and Iraq is the most oppressive place on the face of the earth. Cities like Fallujah and Raqqa make even North Korea seem mild.

People have been eating grass to survive.Executions of civilians for “crimes” as minor as shaving and smoking cigarettes is rampant, and residents are forced to watch. One resident says ISIS videotapes the executions and personally delivers DVDs to every house in the city.

ISIS is even forcing men to commit domestic violence. “Our husbands and fathers were pushed to discipline us,” an Iraqi woman told Al Jazeera. “Husbands would be forced to hit their wives for not wearing the niqab properly. If our men did not obey the orders of ISIL, they would face punishment.”

“Our biggest fear was to be caught by ISIL fighters,” she added. “They have no mercy; they will execute anyone whom they catch or even suspect of trying to flee.”

This is the third time in twelve years Fallujah has faced all out war. It was relatively quiet for a brief period after the US invaded in 2003. There wasn’t much looting. The mayor was pro-American. Resentment simmered, though, and then exploded in 2004 when a mob murdered and mutilated four Blackwater security contractors and strung their bodies up on a bridge.

The US military went in to clear the city the following month, but for political reasons they pulled back before finishing the job. Al Qaeda in Iraq, led by the psychopathic Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, gained total control of the city and imposed Taliban-style rule on the populace.

If something like this was going to happen in only one place in Iraq, Fallujah be it. “Fallujah is strange, sullen, wild-eyed, badass, and just plain mean,” Bing West wrote in his book, No True Glory. “Fallujans don’t like strangers, which includes anyone not homebred. Wear lipstick or Western-style long hair, sip a beer or listen to an American CD, and you risk the whip or a beating.”

Fallujah has been Iraq’s no-go zone since at least the time of the British in Mesopotamia. Even back then, everyone was warned to stay out, and it’s where Saddam Hussein recruited many of his regime’s most brutal enforcers.

I spent a month there during the war, and the only thing I can say in its favor is that it’s only the second-most broken and hopeless place I’ve ever seen. (The first-most is Baghdad, which is better educated and more open to the world, but it’s also where adjacent Sunni and Shia neighborhoods can hardly stop car-bombing each other even when they’re separated by walls.)

After losing the first battle of Fallujah, American soldiers and Marines went back in and fought the massive epic battle known as Al-Fajr, or Dawn.

Al Qaeda in Iraq proved itself so monstrous that the residents of Fallujah, who surely ranked among the most anti-American people in the world, forged an alliance with the hated enemy superpower to vomit the terrorists out.

The Iraqis claim they are not going to stop until they expel ISIS completely. If they manage to pull it off—and at this point that’s still a big if—they’d better learn from their earlier mistakes. ISIS would never have managed to take over that city two years ago if residents didn’t initially see its fighters as lesser evils compared with Baghdad’s central government. That’s extraordinary in and of itself since Fallujans had plenty of experience already with Al Qaeda in Iraq, which was just ISIS under a different name and different management.

Fallujah is a Sunni Arab city in a country where Sunni Arabs makes up only around 20 percent the population. The previous Shia prime minister Nouri al-Maliki ruled Iraq like an Iranian-backed warlord hell-bent on subjugating the minority. Incredibly, compared to him, ISIS looked sort of okay and tribal leaders opened the door.

It was the worst decision in the long history of deplorable decisions in that city. Only in the feverish dreams of insanely bigoted anti-Shia reactionaries was Nouri al-Maliki even as remotely bad as ISIS, let alone worse.

Maliki governed badly. No question about it. He purged Sunnis from the government, jailed dissidents, spuriously accused his political opponents of being terrorist supporters, and aligned himself with Iranian-backed militias. We should all be glad he’s out of power. But more oppressive than ISIS? Please.

It’s not clear that any Shia-led government will ever seem legitimate in the eyes of many of Iraq’s Sunnis—especially not if Baghdad re-takes Fallujah with Iranian backing. What drives Sunni sectarianism more than anything else is the perception that Iraq’s Shias are in cahoots with Tehran.

On the other hand, ISIS is so unspeakably awful that the residents of Fallujah and other Sunni cities in Iraq may see how wrong they were when they thought they’d be better off oppressed by “their own” than by the other.

On the third hand, they should have known better already. The Sunnis of Anbar Province suffered under ISIS before, and apparently they learned nothing from the experience.

So who knows where this is heading? I certainly don’t.

I will say this, though. If Baghdad and its Iranian friends manage to purge ISIS in Western Iraq, they’d better get the hell out and stay out when they’re finished or a fourth battle of Fallujah is all but inevitable

"I spent a month there during the war, and the only thing I can say in its favor is that it’s only the second-most broken and hopeless place I’ve ever seen. (The first-most is Baghdad, which is better educated and more open to the world, but it’s also where adjacent Sunni and Shia neighborhoods can hardly stop car-bombing each other even when they’re separated by walls.)”

Islamic State and Al Qaeda terror groups did not exist before the 2003 Iraq war.

Essentially there were no car bombings before the US decided to destabilize Iraq.

Late last week, the inspector general of the State Department completed a yearlong investigation into the use by Hillary Clinton of a private email server for all of her official government email as secretary of state. The investigation was launched when information technology officials at the State Department under Secretary of State John Kerry learned that Clinton paid an aide to migrate her public and secret State Department email streams away from their secured government venues and onto her own, non-secure server, which was stored in her home.

The migration of the secret email stream most likely constituted the crime of espionage -- the failure to secure and preserve the secrecy of confidential, secret or top-secret materials.

The inspector general interviewed Clinton’s three immediate predecessors -- Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice -- and their former aides about their email practices. He learned that none of them used emails as extensively as Clinton, none used a private server and, though Powell and Rice occasionally replied to government emails using private accounts, none used a private account when dealing with state secrets.

Clinton and her former aides declined to cooperate with the inspector general, notwithstanding her oft-stated claim that she “can’t wait” to meet with officials and clear the air about her emails.

Fox News senior judicial analyst examines the Cheryl Mills deposition transcript The inspector general’s report is damning to Clinton. It refutes every defense she has offered to the allegation that she mishandled state secrets. It revealed an email that hadn't been publicly made known showing Clinton’s state of mind. And it paints a picture of a self-isolated secretary of state stubbornly refusing to comply with federal law for venal reasons; she simply did not want to be held accountable for her official behavior.

(IraqiNews.com) Anbar – On Saturday, official journalists with the Ministry of Defense announced, that the Anti-Terrorism forces had stormed the city of Fallujah from the southern axis.

The journalists said in a brief statement followed by IraqiNews.com, “Today the Anti-Terrorism forces stormed the city of Fallujah from the southern axis and retook al-Nuaimiya area.”

Earlier today the commander of Baghdad Operations Major General Abdel Amir al-Shimari announced, that the security forces stormed the center of al-Saqlawiyah vicinity and raised the Iraqi flag over it.

galopn2Sat Jun 04, 02:08:00 PM EDTI don't think the military did a piss poor job in Iraq. We were just using them for something they weren't designed to do.

They "broke" the country in, what, 3 or 4 weeks? Hard to fault that. That's what they were trained to do, and they did it. Policing a foreign shithole is Not something our Armed Forces are, or should be, trained for, or asked to do.===...and it was Ash, of all people that provided the answer with a video linked by they NY Times:

General Garner had a plan, conceived years earlier by the State Dept. to utilize the Iraqi Army to police Iraq.

Then they sent Bremmer over to disband the Iraqi Army, leaving them and their families unemployed, armed, and pissed off.

I remember one time when there was a despairing young black kid in LA threatening to jump off a building, and the cops couldn't talk him down. Finally Ali showed up in his Limo, talked the kid down, and took him home with him. Most of the nation were watching on CNN, as were my Aunt and I. That set in cement her admiration for Ali, and mine, too.

By fall 2017 Washington state public schools will begin teaching gender expression to kindergarteners under newly-approved health education learning standards that designate sexual health a “core idea” of public K-12 education.

While some aspects of sexual health aren’t taught K-12 (HIV prevention begins in fourth grade), one component of sexual health titled “Self-Identity” begins in kindergarten, where students will be expected to “Understand there are many ways to express gender.”

The state’s health education glossary defines gender as “A social construct based on emotional, behavioral, and cultural characteristics attached to a person’s assigned biological sex.” Gender expression, meanwhile, is defined as “The way someone outwardly expresses their gender.”

These definitions differ from the state’s definition of “biological sex”: “Based on chromosomes, hormones, and internal and external anatomy.”

Posted directly outside President Clinton's Oval Office, Former Secret Service officer Gary Byrne reveals what he observed of Hillary Clinton's character and the culture inside the White House while protecting the First Family.

(((((In reality, the opposite has happened. Political violence has arisen not from the right, but from the left. Progressives are already predisposed to violence against Trump supporters as a consequence of the mindset wherein political rights are only accorded to those who ascribe to a slate of largely liberal viewpoints.))))) Add to that the belief that your opponent is a fascist intent only on the usurpation of personal power and the destruction of the democratic system, and you get a toxic mix, one that makes the leap to justifying violence a short one indeed. As the socialist provocateur Fredrik deBoer, no friend of liberal pundits, wrote on Twitter: “Journalists with big platforms called Trump a literal fascist on the rise for months. How did you expect people to react to that?”

If totalitarianism comes to the USA it will come from the left not the right.

Sanders notably did not mention the terrorist attacks when he held a rally in San Bernardino last week.

Not all attendees were interested in revisiting the shooting. Mariana Sanchez, a student at CSU San Bernardino, said the attack "didn't really affect us as much as a lot of people would think."

Instead, the 21-year-old math major said she was more interested in Clinton's proposals to control tuition costs. She and her friend Richard Torres, a 20-year-old public administration major, said they were still deciding between whether to vote for Clinton or Sanders in Tuesday's primary.===More Fat Mexicans for Free Stuff.

By the time President Obama took office, Muslim Brotherhood-linked leaders in the United States were forcing changes to national security policy and even being invited into the highest chambers of influence. A policy known as Countering Violent Extremism emerged, downplaying the threat of supremacist Islam as unrelated to the religion and just one among many violent ideological movements.

When recently retired DHS frontline officer and intelligence expert Philip Haney bravely tried to say something about the people and organizations that threatened the nation, his intelligence information was eliminated, and he was investigated by the very agency assigned to protect the country. The national campaign by the DHS to raise public awareness of terrorism and terrorism-related crime known as If You See Something, Say Something effectively has become If You See Something, Say Nothing.

In See Something, Say Nothing, Haney a charter member of DHS with previous experience in the Middle East and co-author Art Moore expose just how deeply the submission, denial and deception run. Haney's insider, eyewitness account, supported by internal memos and documents, exposes a federal government capitulating to an enemy within and punishing those who reject its narrative.

Warning: Most of these links lead to stories about NSFW events. Click at your own risk.

Why is it that every time an issue comes up, leftist protestors inevitably arrive at “let’s take our clothes off!” Honestly, I have yet to see an issue where flashing their junk wasn’t the route they took.

Want to protest global warming? Get naked. Link

Want to protest a dress code? Get naked. Link

Want to protest Instagram’s policies? Get naked. Link

Want to protest overfishing? Get naked. Link

Want to protest eating meat? Get naked. Link

Want to show your support for abortions? Get in a bathtub with your pregnant friend and get naked. Link

I never understood the correlation between the issues and nudity. There’s something in the leftist camp that makes getting naked to talk about something completely unrelated to your kit and tackle completely valid....

Magnificent Ronald and the Founding Fathers of al Qaeda

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Reagan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985). During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We repeated the insanity with ISIS against Syria.